Miserere

After finishing this game I felt the need to review it.
Miserere is a game where you play your dreams.
There have been quite some games of this type the past years, but Miserere is one of the best ones.

Why? It will be hard to explain this without comparing it to the other games of this type. I will still go through my usual rating categories to explain it.

Story - The story is good, at first there isn't much to the story other than that you're alone and the only thing you can really do is sleep. Towards the end you will actually understand a bit more about what your dreams are about. I wouldn't say the story is perfect, but it's pretty close to what is possible in such type of game already. In the end I felt there were too little ties between the dreams and the real world. There could have been a few more things to do in the real world or maybe things to "resolve" in the dreams to get a better ending (there is only one in this game). The final conclusion at the end of the game seemed way too unrelated to the real world (I don't want to go into details to not spoiler anyone). Just when I felt the story is starting to go somewhere, the game was over and I was sad (mainly because it's a good game, but also because I felt there should be more). The story is still way above average, but I will refrain from giving it a perfect score: 4.5/5

Graphics - I can't say much other than that they are perfect. They are original, no generic RPG Maker stuff, they fit perfectly and even have ties with the story, they look good and I also like the fact that the main character was drawn so you can't tell his/her gender: 5/5

Music - Music is great, too. I'm not sure if it's fully original like the graphics, though. The music and sound effects certainly help the atmosphere strongly. Not much else to say about it: 4.5/5

Gameplay - Well you walk around and investigate things. The biggest flaw in gameplay is a section where there are moving creatures that can instant kill you (read: wake you up) and it's fairly hard to get past them, because if you coincidentally are next to them while they reach a tile, you will just die, so you'd need to time it so they are between two tiles which is often fairly hard to tell. Apart from this flaw, the gameplay in this game is alot better than in other dreams games. The puzzles are all solvable without a walkthrough because they are easy to understand and also the required items are automatically chosen if they are in your inventory (unlike e.g. Yume Nikki where you are constantly using everything you have in hope something will happen). However, this also makes them a bit too easy. The only challenge is in finding the puzzle, just saying "Yes" is no challenge. All in all the whole puzzle solving is a lot better than in Yume Nikki. The game also refrains from adding in any JRPG elements, so there is no problem with balance at all either (which certain other dream games have). All in all I'd say this allows for a close to perfect score: 4.5/5

Stability - Game never crashed for me at all, neither did I encounter any bugs. 5/5

Summary:
Story - 4.5/5 (great, but could still have more to it)
Graphics - 5/5 (perfect in all aspects)
Music - 4.5/5 (great use of the music)
Gameplay - 4.5/5 (minor flaws, puzzles are easy, otherwise best there is)
Stability - 5/5 (stable and bug-free)

Total - 4.5/5

Final word: This game is certainly the best game of the "play your dreams" genre I have ever played, yet I felt there is still room for improvement to make a truly perfect game. That final tiny bit in the conclusion that makes you go "woah I totally didn't expect this, genius!" is still missing and instead you go like "aww, over already? I really loved this game, nice ending, but is that really all?".